Just two days ago Howard Carpendale recovered “from our friend Corona”. The doctors, he jokes at the beginning of his appearance on Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt, would have advised him against the usual extensive mobility. Namely this one: One of the background singers demonstrates the Michael Jackson moves to “Billie Jean”.
Instead: “Hello Again” after getting into the mood with a medley of sung Howie evergreens from six decades, including his legendary German version of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, “Indianapolis” and “Das Schöne Girls from Page 1”, the first hit from 1970. This concert on the Gendarmenmarkt as part of the “Classic Open Air” was postponed for two years – a variation of “The Show of My Life”, here “The Symphony of My Life”. Eight strings and five wind instruments, however, do not dominate Carpendale’s patented band, which even plays “Door to Door with Alice” without being gaudy and dull – just as little as one singer and three singers overload his performance.
There is no excess in Carpendale, who sings the melodramas, the songs of separation and loneliness in a downright subtle way: the pathos lies in the songs, it doesn’t need any grand gestures. Like the late Sinatra, Carpendale doesn’t do anything unnecessary on stage: timing is everything. He tells the anecdotes in a living room tone, he honors his loyal bassist Frank Itt with good humor (“Your hair used to be like Boris Johnson”), and the self-irony when talking about his age – he is 76 – does not rumble when he the very young singer asks if she can remember the “hit parade” on ZDF. The band then plays the fanfare of the show, even the voice of Dieter Thomas Heck sounds – and Carpendale sings, with a bow to Peter Maffay and the Münchner Freiheit, “Du” and “Ohne dich”, before he sings “Deine traces in the sand” and “Alice” brings.
Yes, he recorded 700 songs, but the art is in the selection. He had “Saturday Night” rearranged to emphasize the lyrics (and he sings it twice that night). “Go,” a truly unusual hit text, is always in the repertoire – as is “Night, when everything is sleeping,” a piece that is sung along with precision by the audience. At the end of the first part, the sentiment of “You’re still here” and “Under one sky” is well tempered. He thwarts the feeling with the apercu from his son’s wedding, who asked him not to sing his own song, but to perform Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World”. And of course Howie sings it in a guttural Satchmo voice. “Suspicious Minds” is also always on the program, a favorite song of Carpendales.
Howard Carpendale closes the concert under a dramatic sky over the Gendarmenmarkt with “Ti Amo” and “Saturday Night”. On the corner of Markgrafenstrasse, some young women dance in front of their smartphones: “At night, when everyone is asleep, dada-dadada.”
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